Transfeminism developed out of a critique of the mainstream and radical feminist movements. The feminist movement has a history of internal hierarchies. There are many examples of women of color, working class women, lesbians and others speaking out against the tendency of the white, affluent- dominated women’s movement to silence them and overlook their needs. Instead of honoring these marginalized voices, the mainstream feminist movement has prioritized struggling for rights primarily in the interests of white affluent women.

While the feminist movement as a whole has not resolved these hierarchal tendencies, various groups have continued to speak up regarding their own marginalization – in particular, transgendered women. The process of developing a broader understanding of systems of oppression and how they interact has advanced feminism and is key to building on the theory of anarchist feminism.

In any country with a half way critical media, the last few months would have been disastrous for Shell in Ireland. In a crucial period in Shell’s imposition of an experimental gas pipeline on the people of Erris it emerges that Michael Dwyer, one of the security guards on this project, was part of an attempt to trigger a civil war in Bolivia. Soon after that it became clear that at least three others who had worked as security guards at the Shell compound had travelled to Bolivia with Dwyer and were wanted there for questioning. Some, it emerged, had links to fascist organizations in Eastern Europe.

A revolutionary programme is, in a few words, a set of very precise and concrete proposals to advance towards profound social transformations. It is not revolutionary theory, but the application of this theory in order to comprehend and change a concrete society. It departs from an analysis of the current society, studies the current conditions of the terrain for the class struggle, identifies the most urgent problems and the conditions to develop a movement; studies potential allies and enemies; and proposes a series of changes, as well as a way to reach them by means of struggle.

An article which discusses the anarchist programme from a revolutionary anarchist perspective. In it, the author analyses the need to make a qualitative shift from an anarchism which is restricted to propaganda circles, to an anarchism with the possibility of social transformation, putting forward a few basic considerations for the necessity of the development of revolutionary programmes in order to facilitate this shift.

There are two main trends in anarchism, which agree on antistatism and anticapitalism and opposition to all oppression, but disagree on revolution, democracy, prefigurative politics, and class struggle.

It has been stated by various theorists that there are two main trends in modern anarchism. How they are conceptualized varies with the writer. I will state how I see the two broad tendencies in the anarchist movement, using the books Anarchy Alive! (Uri Gordon) and Black Flame (Micahel Schmidt & Lucien Van der Walt) to illustrate the two trends. I will describe them as differing on the issues of revolution or reformism, of democracy, of what “prefigurative politics” mean, and of attitudes toward the working class.

Anarchist Communists: a Question of Class is a theoretical position paper of the FdCA of Italy and a key contemporary exposition of the principles of anarchist communism – the principles of, among other organisations, the FdCA and southern Africa's ZACF. This critical review of Question of Class appeared in abridged form (for space reasons) in "Zabalaza" #10 (April 2009). The review is now published in full.

Anarchism is not an abstract ideal of freedom springing out of the brain of some intellectual. It is not a dream of utopia unconnected to reality. It is a movement of the exploited workers, beginning in their daily material struggles; and its history is marked by a sustained link between anarchist theory and the continuing struggles of mass working class movements.

This was the perspective of Mikhail Bakunin, the founding theorist of anarchism, whose revolutionary ideas grew out of his experience in the 19th century working class movement of the First International. It was the perspective of the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, drafted by Ukrainian and Russian anarchists in response to the defeat of the Russian Revolution by the Bolsheviks. It is the perspective taken by long-standing ZACF militants, van der Walt and Schmidt, in their two-volume history of anarchism, Counter-power. And it is the perspective of the ZACF's Italian comrades of the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Federation of Anarchist Communists, or FdCA), in their excellent theoretical position paper “Anarchist Communists: a Question of Class”.